[rtf]

I suggest looking at the "Worse Is Better"/"Right Thing" discussion, as it maps perfectly to your situation: http://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html

Worse Is Better gives you fast results with tradeoffs that you already knew of, while Right Thing approaches will allow you to discover hidden problems as you attempt to write the ideal program. So you learn more when you start from scratch, and that is a worthy goal.